The world's struggle against the spread of fake news (or precisely: disinformation) has been ongoing for several years. Recently undoubtedly seen the world's biggest challenges so far in terms of overcoming the rise of post-truth politics. From rising societal tensions among ethnic fault lines, to the rising number of persecutions and hate-speech against political minorities, it has not become a rare sight to witness world's news headlines feature one of 2017 and 2018's most popular buzzwords: “hoax”, "fake news" and "disinformation". Civilians awareness growing increasingly about the danger that disinformation pose (including dangerous content such as intolerance, radicalism, extremism and terrorism), as both printed and digital media have continued to highlight the issue throughout the year, and the society is currently in the process of learning to become critical of the information that they receive through social media and messaging applications. However, these hopeful developments of the people's Internet as well as digital literacy should be evenly and massively spread throughout the nation, which is magnified by the collaborative support from multistakeholder. We must also conduct strong actions, such as legal implementation of the laws, digital literacy education and clear community guidelines that prohibit the spread of hoax, disinformation and dangerous content with accountable approach as well as respecting freedom of expression and online rights.

Organizers:

Ministry of Communication and Information Technology of the Republic of Indonesia (MCIT)

Co-organizers:

ID-IGF (Indonesia Internet Governance Forum)

SIBERKREASI (Indonesian Digital Literacy National Movement)

Speakers:

(confirmed, alphabetical order)

Mr Anang Latif (Indonesia Ministry of Communication and IT, CEO)

Mr David Kaye (United Nations, Special Rapporteur of Freedom of Expression)

Keeping the rights of freedom of expression, drawing the line and definition while ensuring disinformation and fake news not spread further.

Taking legal action as the most effective ways to prevent disinformation and the spread of fake news.

Digital literacy to equip the community to cope with the high information age today.

Agreement achieved at the discussion:

One of the main topics discussed at this session was the importance of contextualizing the issue of finding the clear line and definition of fake news and the universal limitation of freedom of expression. This has become a problem when people use the term of fake news or disinformation, each part of the community refers to many different kind of definitions, which shows that this case is a complex multidimensional issue where people aren’t even talking about the same thing. Therefore, the solutions that need to be implemented should be vary depending on the different manifestation of the problem each community referring to. Despite that, the first step that should be taken is to research based on the context, done especially by the communities who are particularly affected. The other way that can be taken is to strengthen the media as an institution in the act of fact checking or creating alternatives narratives.

Policy Recommendation:

With fake news increasingly become an issue, there’s also increasing pressure on platform to regulate the spread of it. However, the regulation should come with a clear definition and limitation on fake news and hate speech, whether in terms of strengthening freedom of expression and information laws and data information laws which are critical as there is a huge trust deficit and skepticism in terms of institution that we have developed for truth.

Ideas that IGF ecosystem might make progress:

In order to maintain an open and democratic system, it is especially important for government, private sector, civil society as well as institutions to work together to solve such complex issues which is facilitated by a multi-stakeholder panel held by the IGF.

Estimated number of participants: 95 peoples

Estimated number of women and gender-variant individuals present: 40 women

Gender Issues discussed in this panel:

Example brought by one of the speaker, presenting a feminist woman who is in prison for painting a picture depicting tanks in the city where the Turkish government bombarded civilian targets.